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Girl or Boy Butterfly?Below is a pair of butterflies getting ready for their maiden voyages. The male is the smaller of the two, on the left.
Since wingspan is not a very reliable way to tell the sex of a butterfly, it's better to use the more air-tight approach: take a careful look at the butterfly's rear end. Below is a close-up showing the tail-end of the above female's abdomen.
There's a bit of a terminal point, but otherwise no fancy apparatus. By contrast, the male tail is elaborate---a pair of claspers to aid in the delivery of sperm to the female, and unfortunately not very clearly shown below due to their dark color and the dark background:
They are easy to see in the real live butterfly, however, if you wait for the butterfly to spread its wings out horizontally. There is a better picture
of claspers in the section called Emergence.
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